


Doppelganger

by Trash



Category: Linkin Park
Genre: Doppelganger, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 07:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1042058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash/pseuds/Trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Chester has a doppelganger and it's killing him slowly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doppelganger

**Author's Note:**

> Doppelganger: n.
> 
> A ghostly double of a living person, especially one that haunts its fleshly counterpart

Brad sits motionless on the bed beside Chester, watching the doppelganger pace the room.

“I looked it up,” Brad says. “People call them a doppelganger or a fetch. They’re an omen.”

“Of what?” Chester asks, watching Brad’s eyes follow the doppelganger as it walks up and down the room.

Brad shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“So how do I get rid of it?”

“I don’t think you can. I think, you know, something bad might happen if it goes away.”

Chester rolls his eyes. “Whatever, Brad. You don’t have one and you’re fine.”

“I do have one,” Brad says, “just mine behaves itself.”

***

The first time he sees it is at a Sushi bar in Manhattan. He and Chester sit opposite each other with the others around them when the doppelganger appears. It stands behind Chester and mimics him as he eats, with nothing in its hands.

Nobody else can see it, and for a little while Brad believes them when they say he just got food poisoning or something. Maybe there was something in your drink, Mike suggested. Even though Brad was only drinking water that night.

After that the doppelganger stands behind Chester at meet and greets, mimicking him as he signs CDs and posters even though it doesn’t have a pen in its hand. Nobody else notices, so this time Brad doesn’t say anything and, later, when he approaches Chester about it Chester says, “I know.”

“You know?”

“Yeah. It’s been happening for a while now. At first I couldn’t see it but I could sense it, you know when someone is behind you and you know it? And it makes me so tired. It’s as if someone has just sucked all of my energy out of me.”

“What is it?”

Chester shrugs and gets up from where he sits on the couch of the dressing room and Brad freezes when the doppelganger appears in his place. “Chet…”

“What?” Chester turns and looks at it and sighs. “Oh. Right. Great. I’m going to be so exhausted tonight.”

“Why are we the only ones who can see it?”

Chester shrugs again and runs a hand through his hair. He looks pale, all of a sudden, drawn and tired. As if the weight of the world is on his shoulders. Brad stares at Chester then over at the doppelganger and it stares back at him expressionless. When he reaches out to touch it it disappears.

***

Mike walks through it one day and Chester shivers violently.

“Woah, man, somebody walk over your grave?” Rob smirks, clapping Chester on the back.

Brad watches the doppelganger fade momentarily before reappearing and turning to look him right in the eye. It smiles weakly, then it’s gone. When it disappears Chester usually perks up immediately but not this time. This time he looks worse than before and catches Brad’s eye before he collapses to the floor of the bus.

***

The doctors talk in a language Brad doesn’t understand. Not that he’s listening, he’s busy watching the doppelganger where it stands at the foot of Chester’s hospital bed, completely motionless. He’s never seen it not moving at all, but he doesn’t know what to say or do about it seeing as nobody else can see it.

It’s a tumour, Chester says, and it’s probably been there for years and years sitting there in his brain all benign and silent. He laughs to himself. “Ironic, isn’t it, that I smoked my entire life until today but it isn’t cancer in my lungs that’s going to kill me.”

“I don’t think any of this is very funny, Chester.” Brad says, sadly, standing at the bottom of the bed beside the doppelganger.

“No,” Chester says, staring at it, “me either.”

***

The tumour starts pressing against his optic nerve and Chester goes blind in days. And when he asks, “The doppelganger, the fetch, whatever. Is it here? Because I feel a lot better. Maybe if it goes away I’ll get better, you know?”

Brad doesn’t tell him that he knew all along what the doppelganger was an omen of.

“No,” he says. “No it isn’t here.”

He doesn’t say it’s an omen of death.

Chester smiles and closes his eyes. “Good,” he says. “Because I kind of miss seeing you right now.”

Brad doesn’t say anything, just takes Chester’s hand in his.

***

Brad follows the doppelganger as it roams the halls of the hospital aimlessly. It wears the exact same gown as Chester, its hair flat on the back from where he’s been sleeping just like Chester. Everything about it could be Chester for real. Chester, healthy and happy but it isn’t.

He follows it up the staircase all the way to a fire escape leading out to the roof. It passes through it silently and Brad kicks open the door to chase after it. “Hey!” He calls out to it. “Hey. What are you?”

The doppelganger turns around, its hospital gown blowing in the wind. It runs a hand through its hair and cocks its head to the side.

“You can’t let him die.” Brad says quietly.

The doppelganger blinks slowly and turns away, walking over to the edge of the roof. This all looks so real, Brad wants to rush out and grab it. But when it steps out it doesn’t fall it just vanishes.

It’s just gone.

And downstairs Chester’s heart stops.


End file.
